


Tears in a vial

by forgotten_silence



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-09-03
Updated: 2018-02-21
Packaged: 2018-08-12 17:49:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 7
Words: 3,874
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7943659
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/forgotten_silence/pseuds/forgotten_silence
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Collection of ASOIAF one-shot drabbles.<br/>1. Balerion is tiny when they find him [Rhaenys- centric].<br/>2. The babe is small and sickly looking, born before its time [Lyanna-centric].<br/>3. Lyanna remembers, vaguely, the story of the Princessess in the Tower.<br/>4. “He is my dragon,” Rhaenys likes to tell anyone who would listen. [Rhaenys-centric]<br/>5. Aegon is not her favourite person [Rhaenys-centric]<br/>6. Rhaenys is only three, but she sees [Rhaenys-centric]<br/>7. Rhaenys is kept alive as a political prisoner, or, Robert does the smart thing [AU].</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. A Noble Name

Balerion is tiny when they find him, father and her, in one of the many castle courtyards. He is so small, smaller than the cats that yowl and hiss at her when she creeps too close. Smaller than the spotted tabby that clawed at her once when she tried to catch it.

“Go on,” father urges, holding out the kitten towards her. “He won’t scratch you.” He nods at her encouragingly. Rhaenys isn’t so sure still. It had hurt when the big cat scratched her, and she still has faint scars on her arm to show for it. Father smiles at her then, the same smile that is also a promise, and she knows that the kitten will not hurt her. Not if father says it won’t. Father is Prince. Father knows everything. 

The kitten is so soft in her hands, it’s fur even silkier than the cloak she wears in the winter months. It’s eyes are huge and yellow, and when it opens it’s mouth to let out a soft meow, she sees a teeny, tiny pink tongue. “Don’t squeeze it so hard, Princess,” Father eases her hands from around the kitten a little.

“Me?” Rhaenys asks. Rhaenys is not old enough to speak grown-up, but Father knows. Father always understands her, even if she cannot speak grown-up, just like Rhaenys understands him.

“For you,” Father says. He pats her head. “What do you want to name it?”

Rhaenys thinks. She looks at the curled up kitten in her arms again, at the glossy black of its coat and the startlingly bright pair of eyes. She recalls the stories they tell her, her septa, Auntie Ashara and Father, on days that mother is too sick to be with her. About the Kings of old and their great dragons, and her favourite; the great black dragon who breathed fire as black as its scales and protected King Aegon and his sisters.

“Bal-ron,” she says after some thought. It is the best she can say the name.

“Balerion?” Father asks. Rhaenys nods. “A noble name for a noble cat.”

Rhaenys heart swells with pride. 

Balerion. Her very own Balerion. Maybe he would grow as huge as Balerion the dragon. Maybe they would ride through the streets together and all the common folk would gather to see her pass by. She would throw sweetcakes and candied plums at them and they would sing her name. “Princess,” they would call her. Maybe, once the baby comes out of mother’s stomach, she would let him ride on Balerion too. And one day, when Mother has had the third baby, they would become the Heads of the Dragons, just like Father said they would. 


	2. Promise

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The babe is small and sickly looking, born before its time.

The babe is small and sickly looking, born before its time. When mid-wife lays him in her arms, Lyanna cannot help the small, choked sound that escapes her. Her hand shakes a little when she reaches to brush the babe’s hair; as dark as her own. 

“Will he live?” she asks. The babe’s skin is red and splotchy, its arms as thin as the metal rods of the bed-frame she rests on. Little bits of blood and mucus clings onto his skin and hair. He hadn’t cried when the mid-wife had first delivered him, and he hadn’t cried since. But his eyes are open now, and although they are heavy with sleep- or sickness, she cannot tell-  she sees that they are her eyes, Stark eyes. Cold, numb relief washes over her.   


“It is too early to say, my Lady,” the wid-wife’s accent is heavy. Dornish, she’d guessed, but had been in too much pain to ask. “But babes are strong; resilient. This ‘un’s got a strength to him.”  


“We have survived the cold of the North,” Lyanna says, more to herself than the mid-wife, “We will survive this.”  


The mid-wife says nothing.

Lyanna is not stupid. If she and her babe survives this tower, there is more coming their way. She knows this. Rhaegar tells her nothing, and his men are loyal to him, but the servants talk. Her Prince is not coming back.

It had been folly to leave Winterfell, more so with the Crown Prince. She could tell herself that she’d been young, foolish, and  _in love_. But she is still very much young, still foolish, locked away in a tower while her lover wagered away everything for a Prophecy that did not have much standing. 

Had he loved her, at all? Perhaps not. But she had thought, naive as it was, that if he had seen fit to leave his beautiful Dornish wife and two children to wed _her,_ then it must be, it _must_ be. Oh, how treacherous the heart is. And love, no love, is worth the price of blood she’d paid. No love is worth her father’s burning body and Brandon- her beautiful brother Brandon, always so wild, so full of life- struggling against the noose around his own neck. That is what the servants have told her, under threat and coercion, and what Rhaegar would not, what his Kingsguards would not. And now, even Rhaegar is dead, killed by the man she should have married. 

Weeping about the past will do naught to change it now though, Lyanna thinks. Nor will it do anything for the future. She has a babe now, and she has to think about him first. Rhaegar’s men will keep her safe for now, in this tower. They will fight off any enemies that wander too close. But what of after the war? She could hardly raise a child here. She would have to return to Winterfell. Her brothers would take her in, surely, even though she had betrayed them, even though she had gotten their father and Brandon killed. Only, Lyanna isn’t sure she could face going back. Not after what she had done.

The fever creeps upon her during the night, leaving her cold and shivering and covered in a fine sheen of sweat. They take the babe away, to keep the fever from it, and the mid-wife and the maid-servant takes turn sponging her with a cloth so icy cold that she thinks she might freeze to death. The babe starts crying then, a high-wail that tears at her heart. But beg as she might, they would not bring him to her, for fear that he would succumb to the same sickness as her. 

Feverish dreams take her after that, and she cannot be sure of what is real and what is not. She walks alone in the crypts of Winterfell, looking upon a statue of herself. She sees Rhaegar on the Trident, his pale, almost-white hair washed crimson with blood as he lays in the red waters. Her brother Benjen, who is playing at swords with Brandon while their father watches. Old Nan, who sponges her face and arms even as she writhes and whimpers from the cold. “My Lady,” Old Nan is holding a spoon to her mouth, “You must eat if you hope to gain back your strength.” 

At one point, Ned crouches over her, worry etched over his face. “Ned,” she finds herself saying desperately, “Ned, promise me. Promise me you will look after him.” She grabs his arm before he can fade away, before her dream switches into another. “Please. They must not know. Please, promise me, Ned.” 

“I promise,” dream Ned tells her. She feels his arms engulfing her, his wet cheeks brushing against hers. She hears the babe cry again, but this time, she does not ask for him. Ned will look after him, she knows he would. Ned would protect him, even if she isn’t here.  


This time, when sleep takes her, Lyanna does not dream.


	3. The Princess in the Tower

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lyanna remembers, vaguely, the story of the Princessess in the Tower.

Lyanna remembers, vaguely, the story of the Princessess in the Tower- how the paranoid brother kept his sister locked up in a tower for years until a travelling Prince happened to pass by and hear them sing, how the Prince stole the girls away in the dead of the night and murdered them before the sun’s light kissed the mountaintops. _If only the Princessess had been more careful_ , Old Nan would say, kissing Lyanna on the forehead and tucking the blankets around her, _but children never are._

Now it is Lyanna who sits in the tower, looking out over the bleak dessert landscape, waiting, _hoping._ The passage of time is marked by the tautness of her gowns and her stomach, which is starting to show. Back in Winterfell, she would have had people to re-adjust her gowns; to make the bodice loser, higher, the skirts fuller to accommodate her growing belly. In the tower, there is no one but an old maid, a cook and herself, and three men with swords much sharper than her needle, and she isn’t sure if any of them are friends. What she knows is that they should be on the opposite sides of the war. That she should be in league with Robert Baratheon and his armies along with the rest of the North, perhaps waiting for him in the Stormlands. Perhaps they would have put her up in the Eyrie, where Robert had been fostered, and where she might have sat with her good sisters and embroidered tiny vests made of rich, southern colours and cool, winter shades. 

Instead, Lyanna is waiting in the wrong end of the Kingdom for the wrong Prince, mending her own clothes and doing her best to fashion baby clothes out of her own skirts. Whether it is her Prince who wins the war, or her family, there would be little for Lyanna to celebrate.

_If only I had done things differently._

“You’ll be safe here,” Rhaegar had told her before he’d left months ago, when she’d begged him to take her home to Ned. “There is no one at Winterfell now, Lyanna, and I can’t guarantee you a safe journey. You will stay here until I come back. I will take you to your brothers then, I promise.”

They call it the Tower of Joy, but Lyanna does not find any joy in it at all. She is not a prisoner, yet they would not let her leave. She might have been able to get away, but even then, where would she go? The journey across the terrain was treacherous for anyone, and this was so far south that she would not make it to Winterfell without being captured or killed, _if_ she managed to find her way out of the Prince’s Pass. 

As much as she hates to admit is, Rhaegar is right. They might have been able to prevent the uprising had they gotten her to Winterfell in time, before her Brandon had marched into the Mad King’s halls, before they’d burnt her father. 

So now she waits, staring at the mountains she can see from the top of her tower room, for the end of a war that seems to drag on relentlessly, for a babe that is growing too quickly in her belly and a world that isn’t ready for it, for a Prince who might never come home.

 

 


	4. Wild

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The adventures of Balerion the cat.

For a cat so small, Balerion is wild. He bites Lady Ashara when she tries to take him from Rhaenys when it is time for bed. He scratches Uncle Viserys whenever the opportunity presents itself and makes him cry. He bites a tiny mouthful off Ser Gregor’s calf, cloth and all, leaves claw marks down Father’s best riding leathers, nips at the corners of Rhaenys’s song books and makes little holes in her best clothes faster than the ladies can repair them. He loves to pounce on her septa’s head and make her run from the room in fright, knocks over everything he can, and claw at anything that offends him by moving. “What a fright,” everyone would shake their heads and say, “What a little devil.”

“He is my dragon,” Rhaenys likes to tell anyone who would listen, “when I am big and he is ‘uge, I’ll ride on his back and wave to every’un.” 

“He is not a dragon you idiot,” Viserys would sneer at her whenever he heard her saying that. Rhaenys, in turn, would stick her nose in the air and huff. “You don’t know what a dragon looks like,” she would say, “You’ve ne’er seen one.” Except she couldn’t say her ‘r’s very well yet, and ended up saying ‘dwagon’ every time, which would make Viserys and laugh meanly and say “dwagon! Did you here? The pwincess has a dwagon!” Then, Balerion would leap from her arms and either bite or claw her young uncle, sending him away in a fit of tears.

Late at night, when Rhaenys can’t sleep, Balerion sits on her stomach, ears picked forwards, and she tells him about Father, how he had to leave to protect the Realm, how he is right now wearing his shiny dragon armor and marching against their enemies. Then, when her voice wobbles and tears start prickling at the corners of her eyes because talking about father makes her miss him terribly, Balerion would curl up at her side, his head tucked under her chin. Sometimes, when baby Aegon won’t stop crying and Septa is too busy to come and sit with her, Balerion would read her books with her, singing in his cat voice in the language of cats.

Rhaenys is glad when they leave home. “Maybe Father is there!” she tells Mother, clapping her hands in excitement. “Not yet, sweetling,” Mother says, “he is in the Riverlands.” But it doesn’t dampen her excitement. They are going to the Red Keep, where all the Dragon skulls are, and she cannot wait to show Balerion his namesake. 

“I’ll show you, Balerion,” she pats him on the head, holding him close to her heart, watching as Dragonstone disappears into the waves. “I’ll show you all the great Dragons and Father! Father will come back and see how big you are now.”


	5. Eyes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rhaenys is only three, but she sees.

Rhaenys is only three, but she sees.

Hiding behind the curtains of her mother’s apartments, she sees mother slapping father across his face.

“You are a disgrace to your children,” mother screams at father, hair disarrayed, tears streaming down her face.  “You and your Northern Wench.”

“You will not speak of her that way,” Father’s voice is harsh, much sharper than Rhaenys has ever heard him speak. He pulls Mother up by the collar of her dress, and she gasps. For a moment, Rhaenys is so scared he is going to kill her that she almost rushes out of her hiding place. But then, he lets her go and she drops to the ground like a wilted flower.

After father leaves, mother cries and cries and cries, holding onto baby Aegon like he is her life-line. she has never seen her mother cry. Rhaenys cries too, wrapped up in the dark red of the curtains that hides her from Mother’s eyes.

Later, she asks Lady Ashara what a Northern Wench is.

“You mustn’t say such things, little Princess,” is all lady Ashara would say.

Father does not return for months and months, and when he does, he only speaks with the King and his guard. She sees him walking down the long corridors of the castle, across the great yard from her window, but he never comes to see her. Or mother. Or baby Aegon who has just learned to smile.

Rhaenys wants to run up to father, to wrap her arms around his legs, but she lingers behind the stone posts and watches. She is scared, scared that he would pull her up by her dress, just like he had mother, scared that he would shout at her. Scared that he doesn’t love her anymore.

Rhaenys hates his Northern Wench.

“You are made of the fire and sun, my sweet,” Mother used to tell her, “You will outshine everyone when you become Queen.”

“You are my little dragon,” her father used to say, twirling her around by her hands, before the Northern Wench had stolen him away.

Hiding under her father’s bed in the Red Keep, Rhaenys doesn’t feel like a dragon. She feels scared. She can hear the screams even from here. She hears Aegon wail, a loud, shrieking sound. And then he stops.

She holds onto Balerion as tightly as she can, even as he squirms in protest.

“We must be quiet,” she tells him, “We are made of fire and sun, and we must not cry.” But tears are streaming down her face already and her breath is coming in little shuddering gasps.

“Father is going to come,” she tells Balerion through her sobs.

When the door of her father’s room bangs open and boots come into view, Rhaenys holds her breath. Please don’t see us, she thinks, Please, please, please.

She cries when hands reach for her, when they snatch Balerion from her hands and rip his head off as she watches.

She screams for her father as the Lannister man pins her down.

But Father does not come.


	6. Favourites

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Aegon wasn't her favourite person.

If you asked Rhaenys and she was to be completely honest, she would say that her favouristest person in the world was Balerion. After that, it was Mother and Father. After that, it was Lady Ashara, then Grandmother Rhaella.

Baby Aegon didn’t even make it on to her list.

It wasn’t that she didn’t like the baby. She liked him fine. It was just that he was so  _fussy._ He cried all the time. He wanted to be held  _all the time_. But he didn’t like it when Rhaenys held him. He didn’t like it when Balerion licked him. Oh,  _no._ Prince Aegon would  _only_  be held by Mother _,_ be rocked to sleep next to Mother, and would not let Rhaenys so much as pinch his cheeks before he began to howl like something evil was coming for him. It would make Mother sigh and say, “ _Rhaenys,_ ”  like it was _her_  fault. It made their Septa drag her out of Mother’s room kicking and crying because she hadn’t _done_  anything. She’d only tried to hold him.

Back when they were on Dragonstone, at least there were other people. At least it wasn’t just Mother and her and baby Aegon and their septa. Here on the ship, it was terribly lonely. The ship’s crew were nice to her, but most of them were too busy to spare her any time other than to  say, “Out of the way, little Princess,” or “You’re going to get thrown into the sea running like that, little Princess,” or “Go to your mother, Princess Rhaenys.”

Back in the cabin, Mother was so busy with Baby Aegon that she had no time for Rhaenys  _at all._ He would start crying the moment Mama hugged Rhaenys. He would cry if Rhaenys snuck into bed beside Mother and him. He would cry if she so much as spoke. He would cry, and cry and  _cry._

Sometimes, Rhaneys wanted to throw him over the side of the ship and into the waves.

“He’ll play with you when he gets bigger,” Mother said. “He’s just small now, sweetheart. And he doens’t like the sea.” Rhaenys didn’t like the sea either. But did Rhaenys wail like a harp player’s harp all the time? Was Rhaneys so mean to  _her_  brother?

No. 

Rhaenys did none of those things. Rhaenys kept out of the way. Rhaneys kept Balerion out of the way and didn’t let him out onto the deck where he might fall into the sea. Rhaneys slept  _alone,_ without Mother to sing her songs and hug her to sleep, with only Septa snoring in the bed across from her.

Why could no one see that  _Baby_   _Aegon_ was the problem, and not her? If Father was here, he would see it. He would take her in his arms and tell her she was his girl. He wouldn’t let Baby Aegon manipulate him into pushing Rhaenys away. He would wonder at how big Balerion was now, and he would kiss Rhaenys on the forehead and tell her all about the Dragon Wars.

Rhaneys misses father  _so_ much.

 

 


	7. Queen

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rhaenys is kept alive as a political prisoner, or, Robert does the smart thing [AU].

“You look like your mother,” everyone tells her.

 _Who else would I look like, the usurpers?_ Rhaenys wants to snap sometimes, but instead she just smiles. They keep her weighed down with southern silks and Lannister gold. “To bring out that rich, golden skin of yours,” Cersei Lannister would say with smiles that were just a little too mocking. In the Maidenvault, her rooms are as grand as that of the royal family; beautiful paintings and gilded furniture, silk curtains trimmed with embroidery and velvet upholstery, and fresh flowers every other day. But even wreathed in silks and shackled in gold, a prisoner is still a prisoner.

Balerion and books are her only comfort. Over the years, her cat has grown from a tiny kitten to an old cat with a nasty temper. Nowadays, she keeps him in her room for fear that the usurper queen would take him away should she or her precious children come across it. Balerion had never been anything less than mischievous, but the war had made him wild.

Rhaenys remembers little of the war, and what she has been told does not match with the memories she has. Her father had always been kind to her, had loved her mother and her little baby brother. She could not, for the life of her, imagine him kidnapping and raping young girls. But that is what she is told, what they teach her, over and over again.  _History_ , Lord Varys had whispered to her once from within the folds of his voluminous sleeves,  _is written by winners._

“Isn’t she lucky?” the Queen’s girls would giggle and say, “You’re going to marry the Prince Joffrey one day. You will be Queen.”

 _Being Queen is my birthright_ , Rhaenys thinks, but she smiles instead, letting them fawn over her; dress her up in their colours and drown her in their riches. In a den of lions and chained up by their gold, Rhaenys knows that even a dragon cannot win.

 _I’m fire and blood_ , she tells herself on the worst of days, when she is humiliated and worn down by the fake smiles and hidden sniggers of the court, when Joffrey reenacts, in excruciating detail, what they had done to her mother and her baby brother, when the Queen tells her about the terrible things her father and grandfather had done. 

 _I’m the blood of the dragon,_  she repeats when she hears that Lord Stark has come to King’s Landing to assume the role of the Hand, when she is taken to meet him and introduced. If the Lannisters are bad, the Starks are worse. Rhaenys knows what her grandfather did to Lord Stark’s family, what they said her own father did to Lord Stark’s sister. But when Lord Stark smiles at her, she can find nothing but sorrow in his gaze. 

“My Lady,you are as gentle as your father,” Lord Stark says, surprising her.

Rhaenys blinks, fighting back the sudden urge to cry. No one, ever since she could remember, had ever told her anything nice about her father. 

“Thank you,” she says.


End file.
